Elon Musk has publicly endorsed National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen ahead of France’s 2027 presidential election. He declared her “France’s last hope” in a post published on X on July 15, 2026.
The message reached Musk’s more than 240 million followers. It came shortly after a French appeals court confirmed her conviction in a European Parliament embezzlement case, reduced her penalties and restored her eligibility to run.
The endorsement triggered accusations of foreign political interference from her opponents in France. It also drew criticism from prominent European figures.
His endorsement arrived just days after a ruling by the Paris Court of Appeal on July 7, 2026. The court confirmed Le Pen’s guilt but lowered her sentence, restoring her eligibility to contest the 2027 presidential election.
The decision followed her conviction in the European Parliament funds case. She was found guilty over the misuse of European Parliament money involving payments to parliamentary assistants linked to her party, a scheme the court valued at €2.8 million and running from 2004 to 2016.
The court sentenced Le Pen to a €100,000 fine and one year of detention to be served under electronic monitoring. It also cut her period of ineligibility to 45 months, 30 of them suspended.
The 15-month firm portion, counted from the March 31, 2025 first-instance verdict, had already elapsed, so she regained her civic rights immediately. She has since appealed to the Cour de cassation, France’s highest court, which suspends the custodial sentence and is due to rule by early April 2027.
The ruling had placed Le Pen’s political future at the centre of a major democratic debate. Her supporters argued that removing a candidate who was leading the polls would deprive voters of the chance to decide the country’s future.
They said it could also undermine confidence in the democratic process. In its ruling the court said it had weighed “the freedom of candidacy” and “the free choice of voters”.
The appeal decision ultimately preserved Le Pen’s eligibility and allowed her campaign to continue. It turned the legal battle over her candidacy into one of the defining issues of the early presidential race.
Le Pen announced the same evening, in an interview on TF1, that she would be the RN candidate. She had earlier said campaigning while wearing an electronic tag would be “not possible”.
Musk’s message came at a politically sensitive moment. Le Pen had just secured her place in the race again, and opinion polls showed her emerging as the leading candidate.
The endorsement carries weight because Le Pen remains one of the strongest figures on the French right. With President Emmanuel Macron constitutionally barred from seeking a third consecutive term, the 2027 election is expected to be a major turning point for France.
French government officials and opposition politicians quickly condemned Musk’s comments. French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot responded on X, writing that “only fools never change their minds”.
Former European commissioner Thierry Breton warned that “the season of interference is beginning”. He said that, while Musk was free to express his political views, French authorities should ensure that X’s recommendation algorithms did not unfairly amplify one candidate over others during the campaign.
Breton stressed that “the rule of law applies to everyone, without exception”. His criticism also revived his earlier confrontation with Musk over X’s role in European politics.
In October 2023, weeks after the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) obligations for very large platforms took effect, Breton sent Musk a public letter. It reminded X of its duties on content moderation, transparency and disinformation, and told him the law set “very precise obligations regarding content moderation”.
Breton returned to the theme in August 2024. He warned Musk to comply with the DSA before a high-profile live interview on X with Donald Trump, then the Republican presidential candidate.
The letter triggered accusations from Musk’s supporters and free-speech advocates that Brussels was pressuring online platforms and threatening freedom of expression. EU officials argued that the rules were designed to improve transparency rather than censor political debate.
Le Pen herself did not publicly comment on Musk’s endorsement. She issued no detailed statement either rejecting or welcoming his support.
That allowed the message to circulate while her campaign continued to focus on domestic issues such as purchasing power, immigration and national sovereignty.
Musk’s intervention follows a broader pattern of engagement in European elections. In Germany, he repeatedly backed the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), describing it in December 2024 as the only party capable of “saving Germany”.
He has also defended other right-wing populist figures and criticised European institutions on migration policy, regulation and freedom of expression. This was not his first intervention on Le Pen’s behalf.
In April 2025, after her initial five-year ineligibility sentence, he urged her to overcome what he called “persecution” and to stand in 2027. His endorsement therefore appears less an isolated comment than part of a broader effort to influence political debate across Europe.
Recent polling reinforces the significance of the intervention, showing Le Pen entering the race as the frontrunner. An Ifop–Fiducial survey for LCI, Le Figaro and Sud Radio, carried out on July 7-8, 2026, placed her at 36 per cent of first-round voting intentions, up four points in two weeks.
Former prime minister Édouard Philippe ranked second on 19 per cent. La France Insoumise’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon followed on 15 per cent, his highest recorded level in an Ifop poll.
The poll suggested Le Pen would be the strongest candidate heading into the opening phase of the campaign. Even so, polls taken a year before a French presidential vote have historically proved unreliable guides to the result.
